Hungry Hill, the lost site of historic Indian battle in southern Oregon, is found

The sun rose, but a chilly fog lingered in the air that morning, deep in the mountains of southern Oregon.

Along a ridge face somewhere west of the original Oregon-California Trail, more than 300 bedraggled dragoons, militiamen and volunteers huddled against the damp cold.

The date was Oct. 31, 1855.

Twelve hours earlier, the men had set off on what had seemed like a straightforward mission to converge upon a band of 200 Native American fighters, camped with their women and children in oak-covered mountains southwest of present-day Roseburg.

So sure were the soldiers and settlers of quick success, they left provisions of food and water three miles back.

Standing on a rise across a narrow ravine from the Natives' position, the soldiers and settlers prepared to launch a surprise attack. But someone lit a warming fire, and their presence was known. There was nothing to do but charge.

The men scrambled pell-mell down 1,500 feet of rugged terrain, waded across a small spring and clambered up the opposite 1,500-foot face toward the Natives, who waited on a rise blanketed with oak and manzanita. The Natives tamped their muzzleloaders and stretched their bows taut.

The soldiers stampeded.

South Carolina schoolchildren know Fort Sumter as the first scene of the American Civil War, and residents in Liège, Belgium, know their city as the site of one of the opening salvos of World War I.

So it is a fair assumption that historians would mark the starting place of the Rogue River War, the first war against Natives fought in Oregon, on a lonely ridge where years of escalating strife between tribes and settlers came to a head.

Rogue River War, the first Indian war fought in Oregon Archaeologist Mark Tveskov's black sneakers crunch on the white and rust-colored carpet of pine cones, twigs, needles on the steep rise that is, Tveskov says with confidence, the lost site of a 157-year-old battle in southern Oregon that left 56 dead.

Pioneers and historians variously claimed the battle took place near the town of Merlin or above a northern Josephine County body of water known as Bloody Spring. But no archaeological evidence of the Battle of Hungry Hill -- named for the growling stomachs of the soldiers and settlers through 36 hours of battle -- was found.

Until now.

The discovery of two leaden artifacts in the wilderness southwest of modern-day Roseburg has convinced a Southern Oregon University archaeologist that he has at last uncovered the precise spot of the clash.

"It's important to find sites like the Battle of Hungry Hill because the events of the Rogue River War were essential to the development of the Oregon Territory," said archaeology professor Mark Tveskov. "They're a part of our pioneer history, part of our Native American history and part of our national history."

Tensions that sparked the battle were stoked three weeks earlier in a Native village near the Table Rocks that loom over present-day Medford.

Militiamen and miners from Jacksonville, bent on extermination of the Natives, slaughtered more than 25 Takelma elders, women and children. Natives across the region scattered. The killings triggered deadly retaliatory attacks.

As the settlers prepared to address a budding Native insurrection, a large band from tribes across southern Oregon headed into the mountains in search of refuge.

On the other side of the mountains, an Army officer and 10 of his men were on a reconnaissance trip to map a route from Fort Orford on the Pacific Ocean into the interior.

Unaware of the seething troubles, they stumbled upon the large group of Natives sheltered in a high forest south of Cow Creek. Two soldiers were killed in a brief gunfight before the unit made it over the mountains to Fort Lane in the Rogue Valley. Armed with the band's mountain location, the Army's First Dragoons joined volunteers from the Willamette, Umpqua and Rogue valleys and set off for the Indians' hideaway.

Spirits were high. Victory seemed assured.

More than 500 men fought that day in October 1855 in a confused tangle of blood, buckshot and gritty fumes. The Natives held the summit throughout, pinning down a disorganized field of soldiers and civilians.

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An anonymous eyewitness account appeared in the New York Herald months later, describing the chaos.

"There was no order or system to the attack," read the article on Jan. 31, 1856.

More eyewitness accounts eventually emerged.

Caught in the open as they charged up the hill, the soldiers and settlers began to fall to Native volleys fired from higher elevations and hidden behind superior cover. Men who were there later claimed that their foes were expert marksmen, including one sniper in a tree who lay waste to numerous combatants.

After a full day without food or clean water, the volunteers and dragoons spent a miserable night washing their wounds in the dirty spring.

The U.S. troops and militiamen retreated out of the mountains. As many as 36 were dead, missing or severely wounded. Native casualties numbered fewer than 20.

A crestfallen lieutenant admitted later: "Yes, we got licked."

But where?

The battle occurred in a remote corner of Oregon where, in 2006, a San Francisco family traversing the mountains in snow became lost beyond cellphone range or sight of civilization.

A Grants Pass Courier reporter, 80 years after the battle, pegged its location as a spot in the Grave Creek Hills, a summit shown on maps today as Hungry Hill. Author Larry McLane drew on stories of his pioneer ancestors to stake out a different location to the southeast.

Then, three years ago, Tveskov, a professor known on the Southern Oregon University campus as "Indiana Jones," took on the question.

Tveskov brought science to the equation. His team of a dozen archaeology students and history buffs returned repeatedly to a 24-square-mile area south of Cow Creek, using metal detectors to scour the terrain for artifacts.

Last month, one of the metal detectors beeped as a student swept it across a thick layer of vegetation. The team stopped to sift through the hillside's crackling carpet and found clues at last: a .69-caliber musket ball, and the stopper of military-issue gunpowder tin.

"There was a fair degree of elation," Tveskov said.

Standing in the silent glade with sweeping views nearly 157 years after the smoked cleared, Tveskov can picture the fray.

"What occurs to me is how scared the children must have been," the archaeologist says. "This was an unprecedented set of events, this was the opening of the Rogue River War that started with the Indian people living in their villages in the Rogue River Valley and ended with their removal to the Grand Ronde and Siletz Indian Reservation."

Tveskov's black sneakers crunch on the white and rust-colored carpet of pine cones, twigs and needles on the steep rise that is, Tveskov says with confidence, the real Hungry Hill.

In his hands, he holds an imaginary musketoon, a short-barreled musket. He loads and aims it downhill.

The battle's location vanished, Tveskov believes, into a fog of disappointment and blame among militiamen and Army regulars over the defeat. Back then, Oregon telegraph cables were in their infancy, and photographers who would document the the Civil War several years later were not on hand.

"Five hundred people on a battlefield, a major defeat of the U.S. Army," Tveskov said. "If Hungry Hill had happened after the Civil War, it would have been front-page news in The New York Times."